Hard Hat Transportation is a minority-owned complete supply chain network solutions provider located in North Charleston, South Carolina. Tremendous growth in its warehousing and logistics solutions business prompted the company to expand its warehousing facility.
The company requested guidance from SmartUp on how to determine and plan for capacity, and how to develop reasonable pricing for their services. Affordable off-the-shelf solutions had limited features and were not as robust as a custom solution. Project Analyst Stanley Anderson, a Bio-systems Engineering PhD student at Clemson University, was brought on board to help design and develop a custom inventory management and cost estimating tool that allowed potential customers to obtain quick estimates, while also helping Hard Hat view and manage its warehouse capacity in real time. A similar system developed by professional IT consultants would have cost the company tens of thousands of dollars. The new system is currently being beta tested and will be put into use by the Summer of 2021.